Killing people to save cows

It’s not enough to talk of horned animals lying on a tarmacked road and blocking mopeds and cars to demonstrate what the cow represents in India. To understand its sacredness, established by the Brahmans, we have to go back to the beginnings of Indian nationalism. The cow was a political animal under Muslim rule (12th-18th centuries) and then during British colonial rule in the 19th century. Cow protection helped form a unifying theology for the Hindu community, now called Hindutva (Hindu-ness). This defines the Indian nation by its Hindu majority and is oppressive to beef-eating minorities, especially India’s 177 million Muslims, 14% of the population.

This ideology is now protected by the Sangh Parivar, a powerful grouping of nationalist organisations that includes the ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, Indian People’s Party), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteer Organisation) — from which the current prime minister Narendra Modi emerged — and more aggressive groups, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, World Hindu Council) and the Bajrang Dal (BD).

In 2015 there were several fatal attacks on Muslims over cows. On 28 September in a village in Uttar Pradesh, 200 people lynched a man and seriously injured his son because they believed the family ate beef. On 9 October in Kashmir, a homemade bomb was thrown at a lorry transporting cattle; the young Muslim driver was fatally burned. Five days later in the neighbouring state of Himachal Pradesh, several individuals beat to death a Muslim suspected of trafficking cattle. On 2 November a crowd of Hindus killed a man they accused of stealing a cow.

These killers benefit from the rising nationalism under which laws against trading cattle are being more strictly applied. The constitution of 1949 advised each state to establish its own legislation banning cattle slaughter. Eight of the 29 Indian states still ignore this, and cows can be slaughtered. In three others cattle slaughter is (...)